Thursday, October 25, 2007

Of course, these things are deceptive. No one in the public at large knows who Richardson or Huckabee are, except that they are Democrat or Republican. So their 33% and 34% are a baseline based on party identification. Hillary’s negative number is really the 17% above that baseline. And one would really like to know who those 17% are. For example, if some significant portion of that 17% are anti-war democrats, they may “dislike” her because they like Obama or Kucinich or Gravel better. But are they really going to vote Republican or for some third party candidate come next fall? The folks who ran to Nader back in 2000 will need to take a deep breath and a long hard look before they refuse to come out for Hillary.

I was talking to a friend last night who is down on Hillary because he doesn’t think she will get us out of the war. So he likes Ron Paul, even though that would be his first Republican and he’s having some trouble with that. Now, if you were a mischief maker like Karl Rove, and Hillary locks up the nomination quickly as expected, you might try to goad Ron Paul into running as a third party candidate, just to draw off support from Hillary.

But here’s the thing about Hillary. If she wins, the war is over. Even if she wanted to continue the war, where would she get the troops? Are Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid going to go out on recruitment drives? Are they going to extend service enlistments? No, if she is elected she has to end the war.